The company’s innovative circuit designs and radically advanced construction techniques are now available at more affordable prices.
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NEWBURY PARK, CA, FEBRUARY 10, 2010 — Constellation Audio today announced it will conduct the first public demonstrations of its new Performance components at High End® 2011 in Munich, Germany, May 19 to 22. The Performance line makes Constellation Audio’s innovative circuit concepts available at substantially lower cost, delivering what Constellation Audio CEO and president Murali Murugasu called “some of the most phenomenal values in their price range.”
New products scheduled to be demoed at High End 2011 include the Virgo line stage and Centaur power amplifier. Prototypes of the Perseus phono stage and Cygnus digital music server/DAC will also be on display. These new Performance components employ many of the same revolutionary design concepts found in previous Constellation Audio designs, including circuit boards that float on elastomeric suspensions, level controls based on sonically transparent light-dependent resistors, and servo circuits and component choices that achieve essentially perfect balance of the positive and negative halves of an audio signal. The results are extremely low noise, unsurpassed rejection of interference and extraordinary detail and imaging.
“To create the Performance line, we leveraged what we learned in building our Reference line,” Murugasu said. “The ideas and philosophies on which we founded Constellation Audio are easy to see in these new products. Our combination of time-proven traditional concepts with radical new ideas and technologies delivers an improvement in sound quality that’s as easy to hear in the Performance products as it was in the Reference line. We believe the Performance components deliver the best sound possible at their price—and better sound than competing products costing twice as much.”
As with the Reference line, the circuit designs for the Performance line were created by a “dream team” of high-end audio product designers. No company in the history of audio has recruited so many celebrated engineers, including such names as John Curl, Bascom King, Peter Madnick and Demian Martin. Industrial design comes from Alex Rasmussen at Neal Feay Company, the same man responsible for the styling of the Reference series and of countless other high-end audio brands. All Constellation Audio products are manufactured in the company’s facility in Newbury Park, CA.
Specific prices and shipping dates for the Performance line products have yet to be set, but Murugasu predicted that shipping is likely to commence in early summer of this year.
Here are brief descriptions of the new Performance line products:
Virgo line stage: The Virgo is based on Constellation Audio’s Line Stage Gain Module, the first preamp circuit to achieve perfect balancing of the positive and negative halves of the audio signal. An integrated power supply and gorgeous design make the Virgo compact and living-room-friendly.
Centaur stereo power amplifier: This stereo amplifier employs Constellation Audio’s unique balanced drive topology, which combines 125-watt single-ended amplifier modules into two 250-watt channels. It’s the best of both worlds: the musicality of a single-ended triode tube amplifier with the power needed to deliver maximum performance and low distortion.
Perseus phono preamp: The Perseus is the latest phono preamp created by John Curl, the legendary engineer widely regarded as the audio industry’s greatest master of phono preamp design. Meticulous attention to circuit-board isolation preserves the fidelity of delicate, low-level signals from MC phono cartridges.
Cygnus digital music server/DAC: Combining convenience with state-of-the-art sound, the Cygnus connects to USB hard drives, memory sticks and traditional digital source devices such as CD players. The listener can easily browse content on a connected hard drive or memory stick using handheld mobile devices such as the Apple® iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch®.
Virgo and Centaur will be demonstrated live at High End 2011 using the Tidal T1, a $322,000-per-pair statement tower speaker with matching tower subwoofers. “We think showgoers will have a hard time recalling any system that ever sounded this good,” Murugasu said. “The fact that we’re demonstrating our new electronics through one of the world’s most revealing speakers says a lot about our confidence in the Performance line.”
For more information about the High End show, visit www.highendsociety.de. For more information about Constellation Audio, visit www.constellationaudio.com.
Note: Some product names have changed since the original press release. This release was updated after the Munich show to include the current product names.
About Constellation Audio
Constellation Audio was founded in 2009 to create uncompromised audio components for the world’s most demanding audiophiles. The company’s roster includes numerous seasoned professionals, including some of the world’s most famous audio engineers and industrial designers. It offers a complete line of audio electronics available through select dealers worldwide. All of the company’s products are manufactured at its factory in Newbury Park, CA.
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